


Lows and Highs Make Harmony

by NeverComingHome



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F, Worship, shade-less Julia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:25:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverComingHome/pseuds/NeverComingHome
Summary: Spoilers through season 2Julia saves magic, Kady saves Julia.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Julia has been through so much that Kady wants to believe that this is what surviving looks like. This is how a broken person heals. Some days she’s as earnest as if she still has her shade, sitting beside Kady and going through the motions of new spells.

"Even if magic still existed I’m pretty sure I fucked that up," Kady says and Julia with (almost) heartfelt sincerity tells her she wasn't that far off and demonstrates with her own hands.

Other days Kady walks in to find her furiously moving her fingers, body language screaming in frustration though her face betrays nothing.

The bad days are infrequent and Julia keeps to her word, leaning on Kady to make sure she doesn’t give in to any self serving and sometimes tone deaf impulses. Kady sticks to her word too and doesn’t let the odd tasteless joke or emotionless response to terrible events phase her. Like when Penny needs to take a break because he feels like he's coming in third place to one person.

“That person being me?”

“Apparently.”

“You should find someone less clingy to have sex with.”

Kady sighs. “Inappropriate response.”

Julia thinks about it. “Oh! I’m sorry he broke up with you. Do you want a...hug or beer?”

It’s an adjustment, but it’s working. They are working. It’s why Kady chooses to ignore things. She chooses to ignore things like a book on Julia’s nightstand about apotheosis and god magic, showing up at odd hours to find the apartment empty, long talks with Quentin that stop as soon as they see her, and the feeling she gets when Julia turns her forehead into Kady’s shoulder with a grin while Kady laughs her way through telling a story about a mind reading spell that only worked on dogs.

One day they’re in a park and Julia is going on about magic theory and Q’s latest attempt to find another well of magic for them to draw from when Kady kisses her. She hasn’t been brooding on it, or writing name-smushes for them in the corners of her diary for months, it just occurs to her that it’s what she wants. Julia is talking and Kady is staring at her mouth with a smile on her own. She stops them, says ‘I'm going to kiss you right now, okay?’ and Julia’s eyes widen. She gives a curt nod and Kady feels like she’s falling backwards out of a chair, her stomach fluttering with resolve and giddiness. When it’s over Julia nods again. 

"That was a kiss.”

“Yep.”

“You kissed me.”

“Dude, oh my god, you’re so smart.”

“I am." They start walking again. "I am. Which leads us back to what I was saying.”

Julia dives back into the conversation except after gesticulating with her hands she interlaces one of them with Kady’s.

 

* * *

 

It seems like she’s only meant to be happy for so long. A month after she moves in with Julia she wakes up to a flash of red and yellow, the room loud as if it were filled with thunder. Julia is in a white gown with what looks like small bloody handprints dragged down her front. She’s crying.

“The fuck?”

Her voice is low, unnaturally low when she places a palm on Kady’s temple and growls, “Sleep.”

Kady falls backward and in the morning Julia will pause then tell her that it was just a nightmare.

* * *

 

Kady spends so much time working, studying spells and answering her cell every time it rings she misses all the signs leading up to Eliot and Margo falling onto the steps of Brakebills.

Margo links her arm through Eliot's. “Holy shit someone turned the power back on.”

Quentin all but knocks the pair down as he embraces them. Penny shimmering slowly, but surely just to the right of them.

“Only question is who.”

Quentin is the only one who doesn’t speak as the others began throwing out theories while more students flood outside to cast. Kady looks him over.

“Where is she?”

“Jesus christ, Julia,” he runs his fingers through his hair, “I found a book about how a person can turn themselves into a well of magic for other worlds if they became a god.”

"What the shit is wrong with you!"

“B-but there’s no way. I warned her, I told her there’s no way and she _promised_ me. It takes a constant flow of adoration, a stream of worship and even then! She’d have to sacrifice her mortal core.”

“Mortal core?”

“Her shade, but she doesn't have one so why would she even want to sacrifice herself."

Kady thinks of small bloody hand prints and Julia crying in the dark.

 

* * *

 

"You had it the whole time." Julia doesn't answer. “And those spells I was practicing?”

“Not practice. They were rites.”

“You fed off of my feelings for you.”

“I prepared myself for this.” Stars surround them, an endless ocean of darkness with a blue and yellow river running through it and Julia to their world. “Q told me I could die, I couldn’t risk you saying no.”

“You didn’t even give me the chance to say yes.”

“Would you have?”

Kady’s fists are tight. “No, asshole, because I love you.”

Julia’s thumb brushed the tear from her eye before it could spill onto her cheek.

“Prove it. Once more and then never again. I can remain on Earth as long as I have a true follower tethering me there. You can bind me to you.”

What choice does she have? Fall back to Earth and pull the very magic that keeps her sane from the woman who sacrificed herself to bring it back? Julia is smiling, not a small melancholy one, but a real smile that wrinkles her eyes and brings a touch of red to her cheeks. In every life she’d sought knowledge and now she’s become a fountain of it, for the first time since Kady has met her she’s whole.

“Tell me what to do.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

Quentin, Margo, Penny and Eliot set up the circle while Kady stands awkwardly within it. When it’s done Eliot insists on a toast.

“On this, the eve of your holy boning, let us only hope that having sex with Gods to keep magic alive sets the tone for this brave new world.”

“Yaas!” Margo downs her champagne and tilts it towards Kady. “Once again sex will save the world.”

“I am right. Here,” Penny mutters.

At which point Quentin loudly butts in that the rite calls only for an intimate embrace between the God/dess and high priestess.  Gods only spend as much time on the earthly plane as they need to and generally need a fair amount of incentive to stay any longer. The rite called for the purest of desires, a spiritual and physical longing for the God in question to be tied to not just Earth, but them specifically to the exclusion of all else. More than anything it is the desire not the act which counts most. When the glasses are empty and the snickers have subsided, the others fall into place and begin chanting. Kady goes through the motions taught to  her when she didn’t know she was being taught.

Julia appears soon enough, but this time Kady can feel the energy leaving her, running through Julia and reflecting as the magic which fuels her movements. In her presence the connection is cleaner, like and unlike the raw nerve of battle magic. The others feel the difference as well and all hints of lightheartedness are gone as they become more entrenched, their chants in perfect unison.

Julia wraps her arms around Kady’s middle. “Do you love me?”

Kady tries to relax into Julia's touch as she's done so many times before, but can’t. “Yes.”

“I can’t feel it.”

“My wards are down.”

“But your walls are still up. Need me like I need you.”

All Kady can think is that if Julia really needed her she would’ve stayed. They could’ve found another means of restoring magic and if they didn’t they could’ve muddled out a life without it. What if someone else finds out and begins to worship Julia; summoning her in the way they are summoning her now. The problem is that Kady needs her too much and now that she’s let herself think it Julia can feel it as well. Her arms tighten around Kady and she kisses her gently. Kady feels her feet lift off the grain of the floor and Julia is projecting the sensation of her touch even though her arms remain tight around her. Kady can feel a mouth on her neck, warm and wet trailing over her shoulder while the feel of a hand presses between her legs. Julia is telling her without words that she is not at the mercy of anyone anymore. In the end it is her decision who she chooses to present herself to.

The chanting gets louder and Kady can feel her resistance slipping. She thinks of Julia singing weird folk songs about the apocalypse beneath her breath while making them pancakes, watching her get drunk with Quentin and argue about Fillory versus Narnia, and all the the times they fell asleep with their noses touching on the pillow. If Julia isn’t anchored they’ll never be able to make memories like that again.

As the thought hits her the sensations reach their peak. Smoke rises from her arm, but any pain is drowned out by the sudden, but unfaltering presence of Julia within her, unfurling within her like a second set of veins, filling her with peace in a way that makes her entire body shudder as she moans into the kiss. They fall apart with a thud, the pain presenting itself as a crested J on Kady’s forearm. The group is on their backs as well, hair sticking up and bodies still faintly aglow from the excess magic radiating from the binding. Julia props herself up and helps Kady to her feet. The connection isn’t as strong as during the ceremony, but it’s there, thrumming between them.

Kady takes Julia’s hand and they flicker out of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from I Could Make You so Happy by Bombadil


End file.
